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The Mess at the S.E.C.

A correction is in order here. Last week we mistakenly wrote that William Webster lacked any relevant experience to serve as chairman of the new oversight board for the accounting profession. It turns out that Judge Webster has some very relevant experience, but of the kind that should have automatically disqualified him from being considered for the post, to which he was appointed last Friday.

From April 2000 until last July, Mr. Webster, a former C.I.A. and F.B.I. director, headed the audit committee of the board of U.S. Technologies, a company that is now nearly insolvent. The company and its former chief executive officer are being sued and investigated for possible fraud. Mr. Webster's committee fired the company's auditors in the summer of 2001 when they raised concerns about internal financial controls. Mr. Webster has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but even the most generous reading of his performance would disqualify him from heading a body whose mandate is to establish and police tough new auditing standards.

It gets worse, as do most things that Harvey Pitt, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, involves himself with these days. As Stephen Labaton reported in yesterday's Times, Mr. Pitt actually knew of Mr. Webster's disastrous stint on U.S. Technologies' board, even while pushing for his appointment. Mr. Pitt knew this because Mr. Webster, to his credit, had told him. ''I even said if this is a problem, then maybe we shouldn't go forward,'' Mr. Webster recalled, though one wonders why he himself didn't conclude that this was indeed a problem.

In his desperation to use the 78-year-old Mr. Webster to derail the appointment of John Biggs, an accomplished pension fund manager and longtime critic of accounting practices whom the industry opposed, Mr. Pitt did what any manipulative proponent of the indefensible would have done. He hid the facts from his fellow commissioners before last Friday's vote. When another commissioner complained that the selection process was tainted, he didn't know the half of it. Now the cleanest way out of this mess is for Judge Webster to step down from the post he never should have accepted, and for the S.E.C. to appoint Mr. Biggs in his stead.

As for Mr. Pitt, there appears to be no bottom to the hole he keeps digging for himself and the S.E.C. The new accounting oversight board was the centerpiece of the corporate reforms Congress passed this summer in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals. Mr. Pitt, knowing full well that the spotlight was trained on him, has managed to bungle its creation. Democrats are lining up to call for Mr. Pitt's resignation, but the outrage must come from both parties. President Bush's continued loyalty to Mr. Pitt mocks his administration's promise to restore investor confidence.